


when you're feeling reckless, when you're feeling chained

by deandratb



Series: Maybe In Another Life [5]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-05 14:32:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16369409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deandratb/pseuds/deandratb
Summary: When FP finally heads home from his disastrous retirement party, he finds Alice waiting on his doorstep. Drinks, conversation, and angst, following the events of "House of the Devil."





	when you're feeling reckless, when you're feeling chained

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snookolive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snookolive/gifts).



> Prompt: **"I wouldn't say it sober, but the truth is coming out. I didn't miss you until now, until now."**

She could hear his motorcycle long before FP pulled up to the trailer: a low rumble that grew into a roar, vibrating under her feet as he killed the engine. Alice was grateful for the warning--it gave her time to collect herself.

“What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you.”

She couldn’t decide if he looked or sounded worse. Clearly he was sober enough to ride home, but FP still had the hard-edged look he usually carried during a bender. His tone, though, was more exhausted than anything.

_He’d never been able to hide much when it came to her._

Alice stood as he approached, squaring her shoulders. “Are you going to invite me in?”

FP shoved his door open with unnecessary force, leaving it gaping open behind him. Apparently that was all the welcome she was going to get.

She followed him in and closed it.

“FP Jones, do you have the gall to be upset at **me** right now? Because I came here to give you a piece of my mind, and of the two of us, I’m certain that I have the right.”

“You always think you have the right, Alice. What else is new?” FP ran a hand over his face as he dropped onto the couch.

Frowning, she stepped closer. “You look like hell.”

“Quite an investigative mind you’ve got there.”

“No, I mean it.” Concern cooling her anger, Alice perched carefully on the other end of the couch. “You weren’t in great shape at the bar, but this is something else. What's going on?”

“It’s not your problem. Why don’t you say what you came here to say, so I can get some sleep?”

FP stood as he spoke, moving into his kitchen. She could hear him rummaging through cupboards, eventually emerging with a bottle in hand.

“What happened to AA?”

“I’m over that.” He let the bottle hit the table with a thud, then returned to his kitchen long enough to bring two glasses out.

FP poured whiskey into both tumblers, nudging one her way. “You look like you could use it.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I saw the look on your face when Betty was onstage, Alice. I’m assuming that’s what brought you here.” Tossing back the whiskey, FP drew his eyes down her body. “Surprised you didn’t change first, though.”

Shrugging, Alice reached for the glass. “I came straight here. I didn’t think you’d be at the Whyte Wyrm for so long.”

“Didn’t you hear? It was a party in my honor. No reason for me to rush out.”

“Besides your parole.”

He pointed a finger in her direction. “Don’t you start with me. You’re not my mother, or my wife.”

Alice slid her glass back towards him, raising an eyebrow when he refilled it and his own. “What about Jughead? I thought you were ready to be a better example for him.”

“That can’t be why you’re here,” FP replied. “You don’t care about Jug...or me. And I’m not in the mood for a lecture.”

“I came here to thank you.” She sighed. “Give me that.”

FP’s fingers brushed hers as he passed her the second round of Jack. “Well then, I guess hell is ready to freeze over,” he drawled while she drank.

“I walked back into the Whyte Wyrm tonight,” she pointed out. “I think it’s safe to say there’s an ice rink down there now.”

FP chuckled. “Yeah.”

“Anyway,” Alice said, “I wanted to thank you for stepping in, earlier. I was too shocked to think clearly, and I appreciate you breaking the silence. Covering Elizabeth up.”

“Of course. Hey, she earned that jacket.”

“God, don’t remind me.” Alice shuddered. “I fought so hard, FP, to keep her as far from my past as possible. It’s like she’s determined to ruin her life.”

He spoke the words she didn’t have the heart to add. “Like you ruined yours? Come on, Alice, that’s not what happened. You seem happy enough, where you ended up.”

“You live here,” she said quietly. “How would you know?”

“We’re divided by train tracks, not an electric fence. I have business on the Northside often enough. I see you.”

Alice stared at him, not sure what to say. She couldn’t remember the last time she was actually happy. Maybe before Polly...maybe before everything she built started to crack. But FP didn’t need to know that.

“One more?”

His surprise was brief, replaced with that grin she’d never needed to see again. It was the same smile a younger, bolder FP aimed her way while his hands traced her curves, the one she used to kiss off his face after meeting him in secret.

Alice swallowed the need and the regret along with the whiskey. “That’s the stuff.”

“You probably have Johnny Walker at home,” he said. “The kind that’s a hundred bucks a bottle.”

“Three hundred,” Alice agreed, smiling in spite of herself when FP whistled in appreciation. “But nothing beats a bottle of Jack in a lonely trailer after a long ride. I haven’t forgotten everything.”

“Good to know.” He toasted her with his third glass, then capped the bottle and leaned back.

She pretended not to feel his eyes on her, relaxing into the couch and closing her own. “Do you think maybe you could help me, FP?”

The crude reply that occurred to him first was too easy. Alice had no right to crash his home, a place she’d sneered at for years, and sit there sounding so fragile. Especially covered in leather and mesh, looking like under different circumstances she could eat him alive.

He hadn’t been able to save himself when they were kids. He’d lost his wife and little girl. Jughead was the last--and least expected--straw.

Older, if not exactly wiser, FP Jones was the worst possible choice to be anyone’s savior. And still, it tugged at him. He had never been able to ignore that quiet, broken tone.

“Help you how?”

“She won’t listen to me. And given our history, I can’t really blame her. I have zero credibility, trying to keep Betty away from the Serpents, but I need her to be safer than that. I need her…”

Alice sniffled, eyes shut against tears he could hear but not see. “FP, I **need** my daughter to be more than I was. She’s so smart, so capable. She could do amazing things, but not if she gets stuck here.”

He hummed in agreement. “Preaching to the choir, Alice. If I knew how to keep our kids from following our example, believe me, my son would be working on a novel right now, instead of god knows where with a snake on his arm.”

“You--” She cut herself off, eyes flying open to meet his. “Huh. I assumed you sanctioned Jughead’s initiation. Like father, like son.”

“I approve of Jug’s choices about as much as you enjoyed Betty’s snake dance. Kid takes after me a little too well--can’t make him do anything.”

FP shook his head. “Honestly, you should've known better than that. I may have been full of stupid pride at his age, just like Jughead, but I cleaned up my act in Shankshaw for a reason. This life isn’t good for anybody.”

“The Serpent King,” Alice mused, still watching him closely. “You don’t sound like you used to.”

“Time comes for us all. Neither do you.”

“Seeing Betty tonight was a particularly unflattering glimpse in the mirror,” she admitted. With a smile, Alice added, “For someone who supposedly cleaned up his act, you’re down half a bottle already.”

“Best laid plans.”

She leaned over, plucking the Jack Daniels off the table by its neck. “I hear ya.”

FP watched the block captain of the Northside Neighborhood Watch swallow whiskey straight from the bottle, a smile tugging at his lips. “I’ve missed the hell out of you, Alice Cooper.”

He didn’t expect a response. He didn’t even mean to say it. FP could hold his tongue pretty well, even when he couldn’t hold his liquor, but something about the picture she made sitting in his living room...a little too bright on the faded couch, a little too loud in the quiet.

Funny how easy it had been to forget that about her. Seeing her around hadn’t hit him like this; Northside Alice was a different animal, stiff and cold and defensive.

This was the girl he’d craved, with the years layered over her like the dark makeup she’d put on for his party. She shined through it all regardless, fierce and hurting and alive.

No one FP had ever known was as goddamn alive as Alice. 

“Sorry,” he offered into the silence that had fallen between them. It didn’t feel awkward, exactly, but it didn’t feel calm, either. He chose not to think about the unavoidable tension in the room, two married ex-lovers with broken hearts drinking alone. It was safer ignored.

Alice took one last drink from the bottle, pushing herself up off the couch onto shaky legs and resettling at his side. “Don’t you dare,” she told him, her voice low and insistent. “Don’t you dare apologize to me.”

“What--”

Her free hand brushed his mouth, lingering on his bottom lip before she set the bottle aside and gripped her hands in her lap. “Just hush, would you?”

He nodded, squinting at her like her behavior would make more sense if he was wearing his reading glasses. Alice wondered idly beneath her buzz if he still had the wire frames she used to like.

“I can’t tell you the last time someone said something like that to me, and I believed them."

Her voice was barely more than a whisper, and with only inches between them, FP could feel her words as much as hear them.

“That’s how long it’s been, I can’t even remember. In a way...it feels like the last time was with you, too. I always knew you wanted me, FP. I could always feel it.”

“That was never our problem,” he agreed.

Lifting his hand to her face was a mistake. _It wasn’t his first terrible decision of the night, and probably wouldn’t be his last,_ he thought as Alice turned her cheek into his palm.

“Sometimes, I miss you too.” She looked away when his eyes widened in response.

It hit him like a gut punch, and FP accepted the pain as penance. For the things he’d done.

Or things he wanted to do but didn’t.

He cleared his throat and stood, ignoring the way she blinked up at him. Those hazy blue eyes would be the death of him if he wasn’t careful.

And he was drunk, but not so reckless that he could make tonight that night.

“You should go home, Al.”

Nobody called her that anymore. It used to annoy her how often he shortened her name, when she liked how old-fashioned and feminine it was. Hell, it used to be one of the things she loved about Hal, the delicate way he said her name and made it sound like a caress.

Hal still never called her anything but Alice, but it was impatient now. Annoyed. There was no affection there. 

FP could fit more affection into two letters than she'd heard from her husband in a year.

He was right, she realized. She had to go home. Now.

Before she didn’t.

“Thank you,” Alice said, straightening her jacket as she stood. Pulling her Northsider voice on like she pulled the leather down. “For the drinks, and the company.”

“Anytime,” he replied easily, like she wasn’t taking a part of him with her when she left.

She always did. He’d learned to live with it.

Pretty Alice Cooper would go home to the suburbs, and hellraiser FP Jones would drink himself to sleep, and the world would go back to the way it had been. Or at least they would both pretend it had.

They’d both gotten really good at pretending.

**Author's Note:**

> Title borrowed from "Dark Side" by Bishop Briggs.


End file.
